Friends like these

The truth about our "friend and ally" Saudi Arabia was told last month in a briefing delivered to a Pentagon advisory panel. A Rand Corporation international security analyst told the panel that, "The Saudis are active at every level of the terror chain, from planners to financiers, from cadre to foot-soldier, from ideologist to cheerleader.... Saudi Arabia supports our enemies and attacks our allies."

The Bush administration sought to distance itself from the report, but straight-talking Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld refused to disagree with its findings. He merely called the leak "a terribly unprofessional thing to do." Mr. Rumsfeld said the briefing does not represent the "dominant opinion" in the U.S. government but, significantly, he did not reject its conclusions.

Two other publications in recent weeks add to the body of knowledge of Saudi behavior and radical Islamic intentions in the United States. One is an article in Commentary by Victor Davis Hanson. Mr. Hanson writes about the contents of the PLO archives captured by Israel. The captured documents "have confirmed that the [Saudi] kingdom actively gives cash to a variety of terrorist organizations and showers with money the families of suicide bombers."

Rather than punish the Saudi government, Mr. Hanson prefers, among other things, an American objective of oil independence.

A recent article in Insight also speaks truth. Writer J. Michael Waller contends, "Totalitarian regimes in the Middle East have targeted the United States with a well-financed influence campaign that is being rooted in American politics." He points to a column from FrontPage.com by Stephen Schwartz, a former State Department employee, who notes that, "Like the Communists before them, the Wahhabis have presented arrestees, detainees and indicted suspects as people persecuted because they are 'foreign-born' or victims of 'ethnic profiling.'"

The United States is being invaded by the immigration of such people. That they are funded, in part, by our "friends" the Saudis is doubly outrageous.

The policy of the United States should be to liberate the Saudi people from their oppressive regime, to free ourselves from reliance on their oil, and to expel those Saudi-funded groups that seek to undermine our government.

-© Tribune Media Services, Inc.